Unusual Choices and the National Championships

Mike FloresThursday, August 25, 2011

his past week showed the summer of 2011 a couple more National Championships. Their Top 8s featured a combination of established archetypes, new decks, and established archetypes trying new things and new cards.

Though Caw-Blade showed up multiple times in each National Championship Top 8, they were as a whole much more diverse than certain other Top 8s (say the US National Championship, with six Caw-Blade decks), and there seemed to be a great variation in the choices made even within the contexts of established decks.

Both Top 8s we will look at today (Great Britain and Canada) featured six different decks, with Caw-Blade and Red Deck variants doubling up in each. Let's see how they bore out!

Aside from individual customizations / modifications, Royde's deck functions at a baseline as many of these decks have for the last year or so: Early mana acceleration sets up; Summoning Trap defends against Counterspells.

Artisan of Kozilek: a bit lower on the curve than we might be used to... Kozilek, Butcher of Truth at ten mana is typically more common than this Eldrazi at nine. Though Artisan of Kozilek has a "mere" annihilator 2, when you are getting up there in mana costs, every last point matters, and the bridge between nine and ten mana can often feel like a delta of nine or ten mana.

Eduardo's Caw-Blade is more conventional relative to the current card pool. Phantasmal Image is finding quite a bit of adoption in Caw-Blade lists, doing everything from copying the opponent's Squadron Hawk to pulling Caw-Blade players out of mana screw by pilfering a Solemn Simulacrum's abilities.

Both decks are Chandra's Phoenix variants. That means that they run a bit burn heavy relative to certain other red builds in order to have a higher chance of buying back a lost Chandra's Phoenix.

That said, neither deck is all-in on the Chandra's Phoenix plan. Both ran a full eight fetch lands to help fuel Grim Lavamancer, and Penton went a little old school, doubling up the fetch land synergies by bringing back Plated Geopede (and, unrelated but still old-ish school, Kargan Dragonlord). Ember Hauler (as played by Harborne) has been the default Red Deck two-drop of choice since about March.

William played arguably the most unique deck in either Top 8, a green-blue "good stuff" aggro-control deck combining. William's deck is basically good spells and better creatures, featuring mana acceleration and much the same Equipment advantage we see Caw-Blade trying to maintain, but also strange nuts like second-turn Beast Within... your land.

Skinshifter is a card that has been getting rave reviews from Hall of Famer Brian Kibler, and we see that in the Dunn deck; note that Skinshifter is a superb blocker even against Red, because you can always get the block in before going 0/8, even if the opponent has the burn spell. Skinshifter in Rhino mode has trample, making it a fine Swordsman, and Bird mode is actually bigger than a Squadron Hawk.

Garruk, Primal Hunter helps to make up for the fact that William's deck plays only 14 creatures; Garruk actually gains loyalty while spitting out Beasts.

The main innovation in this deck is the inclusion of Nantuko Shade—onetime Cadillac Black two-drop—in both main and side. Tim played Dark Tutelage main in order to help get ahead, his only red card in the starting 60 being Lightning Bolt.

Across the Atlantic, the Canada National Championship showed us a Top 8 that looked like this:

The advantage of this build relative to most other decks in the field (let alone other Birthing Pod decks) is the presence of a turn-three infinite kill (turn one Birds of Paradise, turn two Deceiver Exarch, turn three Splinter Twin the Deceiver Exarch, make lots of 1/4s, etc.); the downside relative to some other blue-red-green lists (notably, the one advocated by Patrick Chapin and Michael Jacob) is that Twin Pod offers a generally inferior Birthing Pod strategy.

As you can see, Marc only has one copy of most of his creature cards: one Acidic Slime, one Frost Titan at six, one Sea Gate Oracle, and so on. This is because he is taking up eight of his deck slots with combo pieces. So on the one hand, he can just come out and kill the opponent with a super sick two-card combination, but on the other hand, he doesn't have the elegant Hero of Oxid Ridge out-of-nowhere alpha strike kills, or the ability to lean on multiple Inferno Titans in a creature mirror.

Both strategies have their incentives—and the Exarch Twin combination is a big one!—so I think it is fair to say that neither blue-red-green Pod build is objectively superior to the other.

Marcel played a conventional Caw-Blade deck very similar to the one that Eduardo Sajgalik fielded in Great Britain at the same time, with an identical creature set, nearly identical 27 lands, and very similar remaining 24 cards.

By contrast, Mani Davoudi played a fairly different Caw-Blade variant (while still falling under the macro umbrella of Caw-Blade). Mani ran main-deck Azure Mage as a powerful aggro-control card (solid threat against combo and control, but cheap enough that it will typically resolve), and Hero of Bladehold as a four-of in the creature suite. Hero of Bladehold has been likened to the "seventh" Titan—albeit a Titan that costs only four mana—for the power of its token-generating ability. A fine Sword-bearer with 4 toughness, Hero of Bladehold can end games quickly for Caw-Blade, rather than relegating its master into a long, drawn-out battle of sometimes-enhanced 1/1 creatures.

Between the various takes at red, Be had perhaps the most interesting innovation in main-deck Immolating Souleater. This creature, with its Phyrexian-mana activated ability, can pull a Red Deck's life total down so as to avoid the 6 life gained by Timely Reinforcements...

... and of course, when you get super lucky, it can hit for a million!

Lanthier played Dragonmaster Outcast in his sideboard, which seems unusual to me, but he claimed it was "the best alternate win condition" available. Mutagenic Growth is there to foil Combust; you might not be able to counter it, but you can sure keep your Deceiver Exarch alive by pumping it past five.

There are a couple of different styles of Valakut; some of them have no creature removal at all main deck (maybe some Nature's Claims only), and others (like this one) will give a two-of nod to the spell Lightning Bolt, but leave most of the anti-beatdown stuff in the sideboard.

There is quite a bit of debate amongst Valakut players about which two-mana accelerators are good and which ones aren't... Overgrown Battlement seems pretty good to YT, as it is a potential blocker, but some players don't like giving the opponent an early Dismember target. Khalni Heart Expedition is a potential source of card advantage, but is the least consistent (what happens when you don't have ready lands for it?). Pretty much everyone agrees on Explore and Rampant Growth, though.

So where do these Championships leave us in terms of a metagame?

For players aiming for this weekend's Standard Grand Prix Pittsburgh, or the LCQ for next week's Pro Tour Philadelphia, there are—as there largely have been—a lot of options. You can play established decks like Valakut or Caw-Blade, or innovate new ones like Turn Four Titan or Green-Blue "good stuff." In a sense the lack of a truly dominant archetype is freeing, but in another sense... You really don't want to let your guard down.